[Low-cost smartphones ($150 or less) are not a good match for Ice Cream Sandwich that has greater demands on memory and processor speeds. This could lead to some fragmentation in the Android platform says In-Stat.]

Scottsdale, AZ -- In many parts of the world, the typical Android smartphone, selling for $400 to $500, is out of reach for many consumers that currently have a feature phone or perhaps no phone at all. These potential smartphone owners currently only have one OS choice in the low-cost category, (under-$150) and that is Android. New In-Stat (www.in-stat.com) research forecasts that unit shipments for low-cost Android smartphones will approach 340 million worldwide in 2015.

“The low-cost Android handset segment will cause some fragmentation in the Android platform,” says Allen Nogee, Research Director. “Most low-cost Android smartphones are likely to be released with Android 2.2 or 2.3, since these versions are a good blend of features with modest memory and processor usage. The Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) step-up in memory and processor demands makes this release less attractive for low-cost Android devices.”

Recent In-Stat research found:

* The low-cost smartphone area is Android’s to lose. This market could get much more competitive, especially as other OS vendors begin to target the space.

* The low-end low-cost smartphones generally stick with EDGE and processors running at 600MHz speeds or less, and a single-core EDGE chip sells for well under $10. For our purposes, low-cost means smartphones that are $150 or less.